Guest Post: Eden Forest by Aoife Marie Sheridan (Blog Tour & Giveaway)

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Welcome to the Eden Forest Blog Tour. I actually have this book to review and am very excited about it. It sounds pretty fantastical and that cover is just so amazing. Please enjoy the guest post below in which Aoife talks about how she went about creating this fantasy world. Also, enjoy the tour wide giveaway below.

Eden Forest by Aoife Marie Sheridan
(Saskia Trilogy #1)
Publication date: September 28th 2012
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult
Find It: Goodreads | Amazon Print | Amazon Kindle | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository

Summary
Sarajane Anderson is your regular twenty one year old. With family, friends and a normal job. She also happens to be the only person who can save Saskia, a world parallel to earth.

When Sarajane is taken to Saskia, she could never have imagined the reality of the world she steps into, a world where magical abilities are in everyone’s possession.

She must face a father she never knew, a world that is beyond her belief. A guardian who captures her heart, and a darkness that wants to take it.

On this journey Sarajane discovers her magical abilities and realizes they come with a price. Sarajane is truly tested, as her loved ones are put at risk. The question she must ask herself is, how do you choose who lives and who dies?

Secrets Behind Eden Forest: Creating a Fantasy World

by Aoife Marie Sheridan

This is by far the hardest yet the most fun part of writing. Saskia was the first fantasy world I have ever created and the first thing I did was create a map. It’s basic but allows me to see where I am.

 

I didn’t want it to be all cities and towns so I let my imagination run free. The willows were something I loved. Here is a small part in the book that explains the Willows from Sarajane’s perspective.

We turn back to the wolves and make our way across the grass. As we get closer, the wolves become very alert. They all rise, their blue eyes fixated on me. It’s a terrifying and amazing moment, to capture the attention of such creatures.

Mum seems taken aback also as she stops in her tracks. “I have never seen them behave this way.”

“Maybe they know I’m a stranger?” It sounds like a weak excuse. Maybe they’re hungry. The thought sends a chill down her spine. I start to get nervous, fiddling with her hands.

Mum notices and reassures me. “It is all right. I would not let anything happen to you.”

We move slowly under the trees. Mum sits down, pulling me gently with her.

The wolves are huge up close. Their coats look so soft and shiny. They all fall on their front legs as if in a bowing gesture and their eyes are all set on me. One by one, the wolves rise.

It’s the most unnerving moment of her life. They gather around me and one of the wolves reaches me and lies down, placing his head in her lap. I hold her breath.

“It is all right; you can touch him.” Mum assures me, yet her face says something else. She looks confused. “I have never seen them like this. It makes no sense.”

I reach out with a trembling hand and let her fingers sink into the wolf’s fur. “Wow.” He doesn’t even move. I let out a sigh of relief. “This is amazing. I’ve never seen a wolf before, let alone touched one.”

I look all around me. There are wolves under every tree, their blue eyes staring at us. This all feels so surreal. “Why do they sit under the trees?” I ask Mum.

“They protect them. The trees are known as weeping willows… The story goes that a man named Willow lived out here on the outskirts by himself. He didn’t want to live amongst us. To the villagers, he was odd as he always had a pack of wolves with him. He was known to have a very powerful earth affinity. They say he created the spring you just saw by reshaping the landscape.”

“Wow, that seems hard to believe.”

“Willow was intrigued by the mortal world, but he felt very sorry for them, as their lifespans were so short, so he started planting trees in their memory.” Mum moves her hand around us, motioning to all the trees. “So for every leaf that falls, a soul has passed from the mortal world, but the trees will never go bare, as mortals will always reproduce and exist. So when Willow died, they say he whispered into the wolves’ souls and made them promise they would always guard his trees. They have never left the trees unguarded since Willow died. They are friendly as long as you mean them no harm, but they would kill in an instant if you posed a threat to them.”

I sit there thinking about Willow speaking to wolves, whispering into their souls. It all seems like something from a fairy tale. This world was so full of magic and beauty.

I set the world in medieval times, as it would be an era I was fascinated with, but I always wanted some areas to be more advanced, like Aquaterra. But in giving them the ability to make pottery, candles and electricity this took a lot of research to understand how this is done. I also had to research types of wood to build huts and how exactly they were made. It may seem silly to want to know so much, but the more I learn the more the world becomes real to me, and hopefully to my readers also.

Latin is also something that is associated to Saskia as it was their first language until Bellona came into power and banished it, enforcing English as their new language. But a lot of names and places are Latin and there are also a few lines written in Latin throughout the book.


Creating a world like I said is fun but takes a lot of research too, you want the foundations to be sturdy so the world you build on top of it can be somewhat believable even if it’s a fantasy.

Author Bio

Aoife Marie Sheridan has loved reading from a very young age, starting off with mills and boon’s books, given to by her grandmother her love for romances grew, by the age of 14 she had read hundreds of them.

Aoife had a passion for writing poetry or in her eyes her journal entries. It was something she did throughout her teens and into her twenties. Aoife won first place for two of her poems and had them published at a young age of just nineteen. Realising she needed to get a real job (What writing isn’t) she studied accountancy and qualified working in that field for many years, until her passion for reading returned and she found Maria V Snyder. Poison study one of her favourite books has been read and re-read countless times.

Aoife’s first book Eden Forest (Part one of the Saskia Trilogy) came to be after a dream of a man and woman on a black horse jumping through a wall of fire and the idea of Saskia was born. Now with her first novel published and taking first place for Eden Forest with Writers Got Talent 2013, Aoife continues to write tales of fantasy and is currently working on her third book for the Saskia Trilogy amongst other new works.

 

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